Hear me moan,
I didn’t see Mad Max: Fury Road at the cinema. I never pegged myself as one of those fools who will see a film based on its trailer but apparently I am, because Fury Road’s marketing did nothing to convince me to see it.
Once I heard how awesome it was I actually started to regret skipping it so you can imagine how tempted I was to buy it on blu-ray the moment it was released. Luckily for my wallet my friend had already bought it so I borrowed his copy.
And now I couldn’t be happier that I skipped its cinema debut, because I thought Mad Max: Fury Road was 2 hours of trash.
My friend said he enjoyed it more on the big screen, which could be partially responsible for me hating it but Fury Road isn’t thwart with subtitles or miniscule details; it’s an explosive car chase in the fucking desert. What difference does the screen size matter for high-octane eye-porn?
These are the following reasons why I didn’t like Mad Max: Fury Road… SPOILERS WILL BE EVERYWHERE!
Casting
Nicholas Hoult and Charlize Theron were great choices but Tom Hardy as the titular character could have been anyone. The character barely speaks, rarely shows emotion and is essentially a backseat passenger with a bad attitude and a gun.
Mad Max Fury Road Breeders
The women cast to play The Breeders/Wives were the most boring characters to look at. Other than their hair colours there were no defining traits between them. In a film where there are hordes of identical cannon-fodder there was potential here to make these women interesting – instead we got paper cut-outs from a copy of FHM.
Title
If you’re going to title your film after a character make sure that character is centre stage and not a third wheel. Max had no character arc. He’s captured and tortured, breaks free, steals a truck, unchains said truck from a tree at one point, and offers some insightful advice at the final major plot point – in fact that piece of dialogue is the only reason Max exists. The only change Max goes through is having his beard and hair shaved off, and that happens within the first 5 minutes.
Mad Max Tom hardy
Editing
There were some editing techniques that irked me. First of all, the film spends a lot of time forcing in shots that are obviously designed for 3D viewing but look absolutely ridiculous when watched on a normal television. These cliché 3D moments always pull me out of the experience.
Also, there were moments where footage was sped up. I’m not entirely sure if everyone experienced this but please let me know you noticed it too because if not then my blu-ray player might be broken – but there were times where I thought I was watching Fury Road on fast forward x2. At one point I actually had to pause the film to double check it. That’s how irritating it was!
Some of the cinematography and colour-balancing pissed me off too. Overall I thought the cinematography was one of Fury Road’s redeemable qualities (the other being the stunt work and costume designs). The scope of the desert was impressive and the colour palette made sense but there were moments that reminded me of low-budget sci-fi films from the Horror channel.
There’s this one moment at night where we’re inside the truck. Everything is a weird blue because it is night – how else are we supposed to know, guys?
Mad Max Fury Road Night
The Wives in the back are holding a lamp and they’re really orange. It looks super strange. There’s no natural blend between the two light sources; it’s like the women in the back of the truck are in a bubble of orange light.
It looks like shoddy editing, is what I’m saying.
Flashbacks
Max experiences flashbacks of a child dying or of the child turning into a demon. I’m not entirely sure. There was no context, backstory or revelation to justify any of it. Max is obviously suffering from post-traumatic stress, which is the most interesting thing about Max, but it’s not examined in any depth. The hallucinations do save his life at one point and it’s one of the only times we see Tom Hardy ‘act’, so perhaps I’m being too hard on the imaginary dead demon baby.
Many of you will think I’m being over-critical of a film that is considered to be a care-free, action-packed romp across the wasteland but I didn’t even get that from it. I got nothing.
Mad Max Fury Road Doof Warrior Flamethrower Guitarist
I didn’t even laugh at the flame-throwing guitarist and that shit is definitely cool – it’s the most heavy metal thing I’ve ever seen and I didn’t bat a fucking eyelid.
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